Upcoming Bears schedule will prove if Chicago is contender or pretender

The Chicago Bears are shockingly 5-1 but the schedule is about to toughen up.

There isn’t a more surprising one-loss team this season than the Chicago Bears, who find themselves 5-1 on the season despite going through their fair share of drama early on. Most of that drama circulated around the quarterback position, as Mitchell Trubisky was the QB1 heading into the season and he was replaced with Nick Foles in Week 3.

Even with their quarterback carousel, the Bears have only lost one game to this point and they’re looking like a solid team through the first six of the season.

While the Bears haven’t exactly faced slouches in their five wins, they did see the Falcons and Giants during that time (two winless teams until Week 6) and narrowly beat both of them (it took a crazy comeback to knock off the Falcons) and that makes some people doubt them and question what kind of team they really are.

Because they’re the Bears, NFL talking heads are going to want to see how the team does in this next stretch of games before they fully buy into what the Chicago is selling.

The Chicago Bears will prove to be contenders or pretenders over the next five weeks.

Here are the Bears’ next five games of the 2020 NFL season:

• at Rams
• vs Saints
• at Titans
• vs Vikings
• at Packers

The Bears can prove they’re a contender in these games, as four of these five teams look to be playoff contenders (all but the Vikings), and two look like Super Bowl contenders (Titans and Packers). If they go 4-1 or better in this stretch, people will be buying into them. It won’t be easy, as the Rams, Titans and Packers are tough to play on the road, even with limited or no fans in the stands.

Facing the Saints in Chicago isn’t going to be a picnic either despite New Orleans getting off to a slow start. While I mentioned above that the Vikings are the only team not to be a playoff contender in this bunch, division teams play each other tough and they’ll definitely bring their all to the Windy City.

As of now, the Bears are leading the NFC North, but that means nothing six weeks into the season. Going 4-1 in the next five games over six weeks (they have a bye week before they head to Lambeau) would prove this Chicago Bears team is for real. But if they can’t get through this brutal stretch of games with a winning record, people will always claim the Bears weren’t for real. They have to prove otherwise.